Window Treatments to Remove reflected sound

This is not necessarily the "best" accoustic solution, but it does have some advantages. Behind the listening position in my rental apartment is a standard two-panel sliding glass door that leads to a balcony. The landlord furnishes apartment-grade, hard plastic vertical blinds, each blind being about 4" wide. I simply set the blinds at a 45 degree angle to the room. In theory, sound waves hitting the slanted blinds will reflect at various angles, depending upon the angle of attack. A few will bounce back into the room, but most will reflect into adjoining blinds or to the glass behind and then reflect into the back side of the other blinds.

Does it work? Aside from the sliding glass doors, my room leans toward the bright side, but I don't experience any noticeable listener fatigue, muddy textures, compressed soundstage or confused imaging.

One advantage of slanting blinds, as opposed to draperies or shades, is that you don't have to banish sunlight during daytime listening. Of course, slanted blinds will work even better when they are made of wood or are covered with fabric. And if outside noise is also a concern, thick draperies or black-out shades would be preferable.

No set blinds will have any effect below mid-frequencies and exactly where they will change from dispersing the audio to reflecting it is somewhat unpredictable. The glass is transparent to bass and reflective of HF so, in order to have a nearly equal effect across the spectrum, you need some heavy absorbtion from the low midrange up. I've used velvet drapes interlined with dacron acoustic batting. Since the coverage is adjustable, you can titrate the effect you want.

Kal

Thanks for the good input. What exactly do tuning dots do? There is no explanation of them on the web sit referenced.

A previous room had three large windows that were covered with "cellular blinds" and then the windows had heavy fabric over treatments. This proved to be very effective. You could even discern differences that resulted from opening the blinds differing amounts.